


The Promised End

by RecessiveJean



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:51:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecessiveJean/pseuds/RecessiveJean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael asks for a story without a happy ending; Wendy is shocked enough by the request to oblige.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Promised End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [curiosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiosa/gifts).



Wendy’s world is fairies, mermaids, and once upon a time. It is pirates, Indians and happily ever after. She knows the old stories like the back of her hand (the scrape from that last swordfight is healing nicely, but she really ought to take better care to scrub under her nails; they’ve become terribly dirty) and she knows how stories ought to go.

She knows, and she likes it.

There is good, there is evil, and the good must fight and sometimes struggle dreadfully, but in the end, it always wins. Good must. She thought Peter and her brothers and all the lost boys liked their stories that way, too. That’s why it was such a shock to the poor girl when Michael asked for a story where the hero didn’t win.

“What did you say?” Wendy stammered, and looked a trifle foolish with her mouth so round and her eyes so wide. But Michael was a patient little soul, and repeated himself.

“I said can you tell us, please, a story about a time when the hero doesn’t win.”

“Why should you want a story like that?” asked the little girl. “Michael, I don’t think such a story is a nice thing to ask for.”

“Well,” said Michael, “I killed a pirate yesterday, and I think perhaps he would have thought that wasn’t a very nice thing either, but I did it anyway. So I got to thinking that maybe the pirate didn’t know he was meant to be the villain, or else he surely would not have taken to piracy. Do you see?”

Wendy said, very doubtfully, that she thought she did. Michael pressed on.

“So that is why I wondered if we could have a story about a hero who doesn’t win, but rather the villain is triumphant and perhaps the hero even dies.”

If you would not have thought such a small boy could look so frank and unaffected when speaking of matters so bloodthirsty, then you have not spent a great deal of time in the company of small boys.

“I don’t know,” said poor Wendy, terribly upset. “Michael, I really don’t know if I can do such a thing.”

Michael, at seeing he had upset his sister, at once flew to wrap his arms around her and beg her pardon for distressing her. Of course Wendy forgave him, and all was well between them.

The matter might have been left there and never spoken of again, had the lost boys not all been gathered around that evening, too. It had been raining all day, and Wendy did not like them out in the damp if she could help it, so she had ordered them to stay inside. They had said no, thank you, but then Peter had gnashed his teeth at them and promised to cut open the first to dash for the door, so they had taken their seats like little gentlemen, and not troubled Wendy further.

She was soon to regret it.

“Why can’t you?” said Nibs, whose imagination had been caught by the idea.

“Yes, why not?” added Slightly, most intrigued. “I think it would be a good story to have. Why can’t we have it?”

“Especially,” said Peter, “as we have been trapped here and made to do nothing at all fun since this morning.” And he looked so fearsome on saying this that it was plain to see he had quite forgotten it was the threat of his own sword which had kept them all there to begin with.

“Oh,” said Wendy, her voice very faint now. She looked from one mutinous face to the next, and felt that if she did not want to lose them all to bad temper and the rainstorm outside, thereby condemning herself to wrapping flannel around their necks for weeks afterward when they all caught dreadful colds, she would need to give in.

“Very well,” she said, and there was at once a rousing cheer, “I shall tell you a story where the hero may not win. But after that I must insist you not ask for another, because I think it will be difficult to tell even the one.”

The promise was duly made, and all the children gathered around Wendy in a sort of lazy knot that was really charming to behold, once you looked past how some of the children fairly bristled with daggers, and a good number of them badly needed a wash (Wendy had not thought it worth the quarrel that must arise if she had kept them from fun in the rain and imposed hygiene on them all in one day).

“Once upon a time,” Wendy said, “there was a world very different from any we have now. This world was full of sad children, and parents who did not care for them in the least.”

“O Wendy!” cried John, “is it a tragedy?”

“What’s a tragedy?” enquired the twin closest to John.

“A tragedy,” said John, “is a most mournful story that involves death and sorrow for nearly all those persons it concerns.”

“Well then,” decided the second twin, “you shall have a tragedy of your very own, John, if you interrupt the story again.”

A deep and reverent silence accordingly settled over the room as Wendy carried on with her tale.

“Because the parents did not much concern themselves with their children,” Wendy went on, “you may only imagine how very many of them were able to fly out of their nursery windows without any difficulty at all. Yet this did not make them merry, as otherwise it ought, because I am afraid running away is not nearly as much fun when you know that there is nobody left at home to miss you when you go.”

All the boys nodded their solemn understanding of this truth.

“By and by,” said Wendy, “most of those children who ran away came to a place that is not unlike Kensington Garden, except that it is much wilder and more overgrown, and people do not even care to venture into it during the day. As for going in at night, why, that is quite out of the question. Night time is when the wolves come out.”

“Wolves!” gasped one boy, but he did it so quietly, and quite without realising he had done it, that the others around him forbore to stick him with their daggers. They were fair-minded souls, as children go.

“These wolves are not loyal and good, as is my own,” Wendy said sorrowfully. “These are wolves driven half mad by hunger, and made quite savage by their own lunacy. They will attack without thought, and kill without hesitation. Even the children who had lived in the Gardens for years were afraid of the wolves.”

“All the children?” asked Peter, suddenly.

“Why yes,” began Wendy, but Peter cut her off most forcefully.

“I say are _all_ the children scared?” he repeated, this time looking very fierce. “I think there is one who is not.”

At this Wendy saw what he wanted, and quickly nodded her head.

“Yes of course,” she said primly, “I had forgot; there is one boy who is not scared.”

Peter grinned, and his wee white teeth shone in the firelight. “I thought so,” he said, fully smug.

“This boy was the leader of all the lost children,” Wendy said, “and because he was not afraid of the wolves he kept the others safe from them. But there were many kinds of wolves in that world, and some of them did not walk on four legs.”

“You mean,” said Michael, “they could do tricks, like a circus dog?”

“No,” said John, impatient, “she was being poetical. Do be quiet, Michael. You don’t understand these things at all.”

Here I am afraid Wendy rather lost the thread of the narrative, because Michael at once proposed to duel John for insulting him, and of course John had a thing or two to say about that, so it was some time and a bit of blood later before order was restored and all the children were kicked, knocked or bullied back into place.

Wendy surveyed them with grim disapproval, but at Peter’s handsome apology on their behalf, she consented to continue the tale.

“Some of the men in that strange dark world were quite like wolves in their innermost selves. They prowled about looking for people to gobble up, and one of them in particular was most determined that he should gobble up the children in the Gardens.”

“Are you being poetical again?” Tootles asked respectfully. He was promptly knocked about the ears from three different sides, and fell silent.

“This man wanted the children to be sent to all manner of terrible places,” said Wendy. “Some he meant to send to the worst of schools, where the master always looks at you in a way that makes you feel you have done something wrong, but never gives you the chance to explain yourself. Others would go to the workhouse, where the only food you may ever eat is a very grey and watery sort of gruel. Some of the children he even wanted to press-gang onto ships, where they would be made to row below decks like slaves, and never see the sun again.”

Pleasurable shivers of horror went up all around the room, but Peter was quick to guide the tale to the point he wanted made.

“Except for the boy, of course,” he prompted. “The one who wasn’t scared. He would not allow it, is that so?”

“Well,” said Wendy, “he did not _wish_ to. But you see, this is a world where children have so very little say in anything that is done to them. The most evil man hired other men, and they all sneaked into the Gardens just before dawn to capture the children.

“They put drugs in meat that they threw to the wolves, so the wolves were all made to sleep, and could not attack the intruders. They sneaked deeper into the Gardens, and they found where all the children slept. Before any could wake, the children were all caught up in sacks and carried away from the Garden, sent away to all the places that the wicked man had in mind that they should go.”

Wendy paused here, and there was a sort of finality in her face that all the children grew uneasy. Even Michael, who had asked for a story in which the hero did not win, began to feel a kind of growing horror at the reality of what he had requested. You may be assured that Wendy felt, in this moment, most vindicated indeed.

 _Teach them all,_ she thought, _to ask for such terrible things ever again!_

“But,” said one of the twins, “what of the other boy? Their brave leader?”

“Yes,” said Peter, looking rather terrible, “what of that boy?”

I am afraid this was nearly Wendy’s darkest hour. Rather than assure the boys that the captain, at least, got away unharmed, she had it in mind to give him the most gruesome end of all.

“There was a bloody battle,” said the little girl, “with sword and daggers drawn. The other children were all carried off and scattered to the four winds, and the other men—those the most wicked man had hired—had gone away with the children, so there was nobody left in the Garden save the man, the boy, and the sleeping wolves. The boy was clever and quick—”

Peter smiled proudly.

“—but he was no match for the strength and speed of the grown and evil man.” Wendy’s gaze was piercing as she added, “truly, no small boy is.”

A heavy silence fell over the room. Perhaps you know its sort: when you are watching a play, and a beloved character has just died on the stage, there is a silence much like it that follows. Your mother would call it the sort of silence in which you might hear a pin drop—if, of course, anybody were actually mucking about with pins when there were folks dying on stage. I don’t know of anybody so rude, I am sure.

In the little room where the lost boys huddled to hear their story told, the silence was of that sort. Indeed, the children seemed to hardly breathe, so intent were they on the small, solemn figure of the girl who told the tale.

“The boy,” said Wendy, “was knocked to the ground. The most wicked man stood tall above him, and he laughed at the victory that was his. He drove his sword deep into the belly of the quick and clever boy, who was, it turned out, not so quick and clever as perhaps he had once thought.”

That piece of information delivered, Wendy drew back, clasped her hands in her lap, and I am afraid she looked exactly like that one girl in your class at school whom none of the others could stand, but were all nice to because they were afraid not to be.

It was not Wendy’s finest hour. You had only to look at the faces of the lost boys and the Darling brothers to know that it was so. Poor things, for all their brandishing of daggers and their bold refusal to wash unless pinned to the table beside the basin and sat upon for the duration of the indignity, they were really a very tender lot.

To receive a story whose ending was nothing more or less than the sort of ending they had requested, well, you might think it was only fair (indeed, Wendy certainly did) but I will say that for my part, I couldn’t help but feel a trifle sorry for them.

Even so, I am afraid the story would have stayed as it was. The children’s collective horror was, after all, precisely the effect Wendy had been intending to provoke—but then she caught sight of Peter.

That bewitching child had been hanging off her every word to the bitter end, and now the sight of him would have wrung all but the hardest heart. His mouth hung open so that the little girl could see the pearls of his wee baby teeth, and his eyes shone bright with tears. Yet, because Peter was of the belief that he never cried, he refused to behave as though the tears were not threatening at any moment to spill down his grubby cheeks.

The sight of Peter so wretched made Wendy’s heart slow. The pain that stabbed her chest was as keen as any knife, and if you ask your mother, she will tell you this is an agony she knows too well.

You see, this is the feeling all parents get when their children must learn dreadful lessons for the first time, and it never comes twice the same; sometimes it is the death of a pet, sometimes of a childhood dream, but always it is terrible to behold. And always, you may be assured, your parents have longed to spare you it, but they never did have the power.

Wendy did.

“And so,” she resumed, pretending that she had never so much as faltered in the rhythm of her story, “the wicked man believed that at last he had won, and he threw back his shoulders to crow in victory. But in that moment he was unguarded, and what do you suppose but that the boy leaped to his feet, all fury and fire, for the sword had missed him altogether. It had gone into a pile of leaves that looked like the clothes he wore, and he was quite unharmed.”

“I say,” John breathed to the twin at his side, “that’s a lucky break.”

The twin agreed wholeheartedly.

“The quick and clever boy,” said Wendy, her tones ringing with conviction, “drove his own sword into the belly of the most wicked man. The man fell down, quite dead, and never was heard from more.”

For some moments after this firm and perhaps too-abrupt conclusion, all was silent in the room. Then John spoke.

“But Wendy,” said her brother, his tone terribly accusing, “you said the hero would not have a victory.”

“No,” Wendy contradicted, “I said only that the hero may not win. I decided, after all, that he must.”

“Quite right, too,” agreed Curly, and the other boys added their agreement to his, their earlier interest in the original concept already conveniently fading into the mists of distant memory. “Imagine! A story where the hero cannot win. Whoever would want to hear such a thing?”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine,” said Michael, and do you know, he actually believed that he meant it.

Peter, for his part, said nothing. But the tears which shone in his eyes and the hot indignation that had taken hold of him had vanished, and were replaced by perfect tranquility.

Wendy, at seeing this, was content.

***

Wendy’s world is fairies, mermaids, and once upon a time. It is pirates, Indians and happily ever after. She knows the stories like the back of her hand, and she will remember them long after her brothers and the lost boys have forgotten (you may not be shocked to hear Peter has forgotten some of them already).

Wendy inhabits this world because it is brighter and bolder and braver than our own; she wears its stories like you might wear your favourite dressing gown for ages after your mother would prefer you had thrown it out. She loves these stories because she knows how they always end. She knows that right makes might, and happily ever after is the promise at the end of every grand adventure one undertakes.

Some day, like all children one day do, she will hear a different story; one that has no happy ending. Some day she will learn that in this world, not every grand adventure has a perfect resolution, and not every love story can end in a kiss.

Some day, I am afraid the learning of these things will break her heart.

Some day . . . but not today.

**Author's Note:**

> All characters depicted herein are the intellectual property of JM Barrie. They have been used without permission for entertainment purposes only. No disrespect or infringement is intended.


End file.
